The Best Small Fictions honors fiction of 6 to 1,000 words published in a calendar year. As we are eligible to nominate up to 5 pieces for inclusion in their 2018 anthology, we have selected:
“Picnic” by A. E. Weisgerber (560 words), from our Spring 2017 issue.
“Mission Concept” by Peter H.Z. Hsu (716 words), from our Summer 2017 issue.
“Left Behind” by Kaj Tanaka (512 words), from our Summer 2017 issue.
“Drought” by Kim Coleman Foote (390 words), from our Fall 2017 issue.
and “X-Ray”by Rosie Adams (474 words), from our Winter 2018 issue.
Best of luck to all our nominees, and thanks as ever for contributing your extraordinary small fictions to our weird little zine!
IT WAS DRIZZLY AND FRIDAY AND THEY WERE POOR, so Yves and his new wife Della decided to dig out the 8mm. The projector—Bell & Howell, heavy and gray with a square-handled top—was passed down from the coat closet, followed by the Thom McCan shoe box, holding its small library of little films, each in a yellow and black cardboard box marked with catchall names like Cabin 1960, Aunt Belle, St. Anne, and such.
“Don’t forget to get that pen,” Yves said. “You can mark the one with your cousin in it.”
Della’s cousin, Pat Farelly, was back in the newspapers as his verdict was due shortly.
“Oh. Gosh right. What if they let him go?” Della brought the box into the living room.
“I don’t think he’s got a chance. Did you see the newspaper? those shackles?” Yves set down the bulky projector, unhasped its pebbly gray clamshell, shucked it. “With his limp on top of that?” The threading wasn’t so tricky, but once that lamp kicked on, it had to keep running or acrid smoke would announce holes burning through the celluloid.
With a china crayon, Della added ‘killer’ to the little carton’s subject line, and set it aside. “Remember how he locked all the doors?” Della always selected the same films, and it wouldn’t be an official movie night without watching Honeymoon, the time the old Falcon got stuck in the snow.
FLAPPERHOUSE 